rosebuds
by bowl of fruit
Summary: we are the middle children of society. [harry potter, fight club, crack]


**premise:** _Harry Potter, Fight Club, and crack. Fifth year fic._

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Careful the wish you make  
Wishes are children  
Careful the path they take  
Wishes come true not free  
**Careful the spell you cast  
Not just on children  
**Sometimes the spell may last  
Past what you can see

-into the woods, "children will listen"

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We weren't allowed to talk about it, even at first. The first rule. If anyone who wasn't a member found out about what we were doing, we would be screwed. Fucked for life. Sure, some people would think what we were doing was fantastic, in the beginning, but later on? Never.

People don't tend to think too highly of dark spells.

But what could we do? By the time we all realized what we were really learning, we were too deep in to get out. Not that we wanted to, of course. After all, Harry was our friend, our buddy. He was a good guy- we all knew it. Of course we had to learn to defend ourselves. And, as Harry said, Voldemort wouldn't fight with stunners and "_expelliarmus_". He would be fighting us with _crucio_, and _Avada Kedavra_. What were we supposed to do, _disarm _him?

It was a war, after all.

It was only obvious that we should go as far as we did, in the end. Umbridge was the problem. Weren't we the _solution_, then? We were the only ones standing up to her. We had to do _something_.

Homework assignments, if you will.

"I want you," Harry said. "To go out and find a person you hate, and prank them."

Simple. Fun. All of us had _wanted_ to do it, but never really got around to it, or were too scared to, or had some other thing stopping us. And besides, it wasn't like we were _hurting_ anyone. Not bad at all.

But then, there was Neville.

Smart kid. Got nervous easily. Set off the fireworks too close to Crabbe. The guy only got a few burns, and no one thought it was a huge deal. No one knew who did it, anyway. We were safe.

Harry, in his own way, thought it was _fan_tastic.

"Don't you see?" Harry had said to us at our next meeting. "_This_ is what we need to do."

Attack people.

It wasn't like _they_ wouldn't do the same, he explained. _They_ would attack _us_ in the blink of an eye. _They_ were the ones we were training to go up against.

So, we did more.

Simple stuff, at first. A firework to the legs. Itching powder in the shoes. Sometimes, people would "lose" stuff unexpectedly, like their homework or their clean clothes. It isn't painful to walk around in a stained shirt, but it is embarrassing.

_"Do you think they'll kill you quickly?"_ Harry would say to us. _"They'll embarrass you- they'll torture you and make you suffer for as long as they can get fun out of it. It's our right- our duty- to do the same!"_

He had a point, we decided, and did as he asked.

Then the "assignments" got worse.

Throw this in Malfoy's cauldron, Harry said.

It makes it steam, he said. It'll just burn a little.

Right. As if getting your face half-melted off _burns a little._

Of course, he didn't _die_. But he doesn't look that great anymore. Not that great at all.

Of course, we were more that a little upset. Ron called Harry "insane", and Hermione looked almost sick- she, after all, had been the one to throw it into his cauldron, and if anyone found out- well, she was _dead_.

"If I had told you," Harry said. "Would you have _done_ it?"

Don't pretend you care.

Don't pretend he didn't deserve it.

You know he would become his father.

Yes, you're right, we said. He's bad, he's evil, he deserved it.

"Right." Harry said. "Now, what next?"

Our "pranks" continued, but people were starting to suspect. It was only obvious what we were going to do next- it should have been, to anyone. But we were all too deep, see, and we thought we were in the right.

Maybe we _were_ in the right.

They would do the same to us.

They deserved it.

We couldn't have Draco figuring it out. He was a smart kid- we all knew it. He could have figured it out if he put his mind to it. That wouldn't have been good for us, would it? If _he_ found out, he would _tell_, and even Dumbledore wouldn't be able to protect us.

"Dumbledore wouldn't want to protect us." Harry would say. "He wouldn't want us learning to protect ourselves."

He was right.

And so, it was only obvious what we should do next, wasn't it? Draco needed to be taken care of so he couldn't talk, and we needed to suspicion taken away from us.

Who would suspect that Draco had done anything _but_ commit suicide? He had been depressed- we _all_ knew it. He had been moping around the school like a kicked puppy.

A well-placed noose cleared it all up. Draco had, obviously, staged the 'face-melting incident' himself. Only, see, he hadn't thought it through correctly, and had thought he would just get a little burned, and he could pin it on Potter or Granger. When his face melted off, he just could _not_ cope, and killed himself.

And suddenly, we weren't under Umbridge's radar anymore. No, instead she turned to the teachers, who- as she put it- _"couldn't properly deal with the torments of this innocent student"._

A blessing in disguise, she must have thought to herself. Just what the doctor ordered.

After that, things got more serious. Harry already had set up "meetings" for more than just his "first group"- there was the Tuesday meeting, the Friday meeting, and the Saturday meeting- the originals, the ones who were farthest in their studies, went on Fridays. We had a quarter of the students We were a _real deal _in the school, but we didn't have a way to tell who was who in public- was that kid a member, or just a cocky kid? It was amid all this confusion that Harry decided we needed to be marked.

"After all," He said. "How will you be able to tell the good guys from the bad when we get to the _real_ fighting?"

Not a tattoo, though.

"Only _pussies_ get tattoos." Harry said to us. "We need something _better_."

Muggle stuff.

With all the burning we had been doing in the beginning, it was only obvious what we should do.

* * *

By the end of the week, we all had Harry's lips burned in our hands. People stared at the marks sometimes, but we never explained.

Not allowed to talk about it, we said. Usually, they left it at that.

When they didn't, a few well-placed words- _what, you want one to match_- sent them away. Simple, easy, effective.

Umbridge wasn't much the wiser. At least, until _Neville_.

True Gryffindor, that one. Thought what we were doing was wrong from the beginning. All the death, the _burning,_ the "pranks"- they freaked him out. He thought he was obligated to stop it.

He had to go to Umbridge, he said nervously. She _needed _to knew about what we were doing- she was the only one, however twisted it might seem, who would _do_ anything. She was the only one who would _believe_ him. She even promised she would protect him from us.

As if she could buy off death.

In the end, we decided to leave the body in Umbridge's office. "A warning." Harry said. "You don't _fuck_ with us."

Neville became our martyr.

Harry would go on for long periods of time about how Neville had been brainwashed into serving Umbridge instead of his friends, about how poor old Neville had been gullible enough to talk to Umbridge and think he was doing the right thing.

As if that woman could do better than our Harry.

We all went with it. What were we supposed to do? We were all so deep in, by that point, that even if we did want to get out, we would be the next Neville. It was obvious- Harry mad it obvious in every word he spoke, just as he had when he gave Umbridge that note- _don't fuck with us._

Soon, we were the kings and queens of the school. People immediately moved away when we came close- they would give us their tables, their books, their homework assignments. Anything we wanted.

No one would dare ask a member for _anything._

Not even the teachers were that stupid. We never lost points for our houses, even if we came in ten minutes late and didn't turn in our homework. Not even Snape would take away points- not after what we had done to Neville.

Nearly everyone knew, by then, that we were the ones to kill Neville, but we weren't in any danger unless the Ministry found out. I never found out if Dumbledore knew- I assume he was kept somewhat in the dark. Harry wasn't an _idiot,_ even with all his faults.

Umbridge, even, did what we said. She put up the most fuss out of anyone, but she did it. She would pass us on homework, let us miss classes, and we still got passing grades. And if a member ever said to her _"you know, I think we should get a class off to study- you seem awfully harried today, don't you, Professor?",_ she would do as they said.

But Harry, being Harry, had his doubts.

She was our biggest threat, at that point. She could easily go to Dumbledore or the Ministry, and we wouldn't be able to _touch_ her.

"Take her out." Harry said to us.

We all knew it was coming, but it was still a big step. After all, she was a _teacher._ She was an _adult._ Umbridge's death would not go unnoticed by the Ministry, no matter what we did to pull it off. We couldn't do this and get away with it, not like Neville or Draco.

Harry must have had a plan, we all told ourselves. Usually, his plans didn't become apparent until they were done, and we all _wanted_ to trust him, of course. But still, we couldn't bring ourselves to be as blindly naïve as in the beginning, but most of us still went along with it.

But I couldn't stop my suspicions. I just _could not._ I thought about it night and day, and even though I had been one of the ones who _did _usually do their work in class, I started daydreaming more and more. _What _was Harry planning?

By the time he gathered us together, I knew. And I knew that Harry realized this, which could have been why he chose me out of everyone.

"I don't want to cause too much fuss with all of us in her rooms." Harry said. "So I'll only be sending one of you to kill her. I know that the person I chose can handle it."

He looked at me pointedly, said my name, and told me to use a spell to do it.

We needed another martyr, after all. We couldn't have them suspecting the group. No, it would be much more simple- easier to comprehend- if just one person had committed the murder.

"Yes, sir." I said.

_Watch me go down in history._

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**A/N:** Harry Potter, Fight Club, and crack. I have no idea where this came from. Written in about fifteen minutes, so it's probably not amazing. I'm rather fond of it, though.

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